In July, Warped Tour announced that this summer’s tour would be its last, and, just like that, the age of pop punk and scene middle schoolers came to an end. We all knew that the end of the emo era would soon come to a close; bands like All Time Low and Mayday Parade are still producing music, but the fight for airplay has pretty much come up short.
In pop punk’s stead, it’s cooler, more put-together cousin is pushing to be noticed: what The Lightweight Champs, with its debut record, Contenders, calls power pop.
Power Pop has all the makings of pop punk toned down to actually manageable levels. The vocals are raw but not whiny; the guitar riffs are fun but not overly flowery; and the tempos are not quite as frantic as anything from the Punk Goes Crunk series. While The Front Bottoms comport themselves as “folk punk,” The Lightweight Champs bear a striking similarity to the Bottoms — they both put an emphasis on fun guitar riffs and witty lyricism — but with their own unique brand of humor.
Contenders opens with “Crack Greg Jesus,” which sets the tone for the punky aesthetic when lead singer Justin Stiles bellows “ties are corporate nooses” over and over towards the end of the tune. “Crack Greg” isn’t a particularly memorable track otherwise, but it’s a solid introduction to what The Lightweight Champs do best: dry wit.
Track two, “Red Flag Girl,” has gems like “kissing your neck tattoos / kick off your combat boots,” “you say I’m not enough, and girl it turns me on,” and “the fact is, I look good in glasses, and that’s all I’ve got going for me.”
Track six — not objectively the best song, but definitely my favorite — “Goldfish,” is a sad song about a poor little fish: “I’m in a toilet bowl / my fins can’t climb these walls / I hope the other side’s a little more my type.” It’s adorably pathetic, but it’s also a great metaphor for human life as a whole, which, often, can be exactly adorably pathetic. Just keep on swirling, little fish.
As a whole, Contenders is filled with wonderfully catchy guitar riffs and Stiles’ perfectly punk voice. Not all the notes are perfect, and at times you can hear his voice straining, but his knack for timing and expression far outweighs the downturns. During “Going Mad,” a pretty self-explanatory track, it’s hard not to slowly imagine Stiles growing an Einstein-esque ‘fro as his voice becomes more and more unravelled and as drummer Angie Watson pounds out a steady, driving beat.
“The Arsonist,” track three, is easily the best single from Contenders, set up with a lower, more talk-like melody than the rest of the tunes and made to be stuck in your head with the uber-catchy guitar riffs and “whoas” from guitarist and vocalist Ryan Garrette. Like most of The Lightweight Champs’ songs, it’s a tune about rejection and angst in a major key that’s infectious.
Contenders concludes with “Good Times,” which intones, “we had good times / but the good times are over,” a pretty meta way to end an album that fits perfectly with the unforgivingly frank tone of the entire record. The Champs picked an apt title for their debut in that, not only are they saying, “hey, we’re here, and we can do this,” but also that they have strong opinions with a lot to say. Their thoughts just happen to be in the form of wonderfully catchy verse.
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